Use of the Corset

The use of the corset, or more exactly its progenitors, has been traced as far back as the Middle Ages. By the nineteenth century, the corset was part of the female fashion apparatus, which included the bustle and skirts made of yards of material, as well as a pronounced social component. Lester cites the Dress Reform Movement in Germany in the 1880s, which included a crusade against the corset, "supported by docors and sanitariums alike. The leaders were the most radical, tabooing the corset as an instrument of torture. . . . The innovation succumbed, however, when she who ventured forth was stigmatized as 'the new woman.'" Indeed, by the 1880s, the corset was more, not less, restricting, reaching "from over the bosom to the bottom of the stomach and . . . laced very tightly down the back. It has been described as 'that inevitable ruin to life and beauty.' Ladies determined to be smart were not deterred, and laced themselves into corsets with whalebone, wood or metal panels down the front,and with additional whalebone supports in the sides." By the mid-1880s, "tight-laced corsets were still thought essential, and in some cases even beneficial, though it is difficutl to imagine what benefits could be gai